You've Got to Say it Right
by Chloris
Summary: How did Ragetti know how to speak to Calypso to set her free?


"Calypso! I release you from your human bonds!" roared Captain Barbossa.

The deck of the ship was quiet. You could have heard a parrot take wing, but Cotton's parrot was as transfixed as everyone else. All eyes looked to Tia Dalma, Calypso, wrapped with what appeared to be the rigging of another whole ship as she breathed in deeply.

Nothing happened.

"Is that it?" asked Pintel, breaking the silence.

All eyes turned to Barbossa, who was staring at his captive, perplexed. He clearly had no notion of what, if anything, he had done wrong.

Then, something happened that no one had expected. It was not fire works, not a storm of epic proportions, not even a little flash of light, but it stunned most of the crew of the Black Pearl more than anything they had imagined.

Shy, one-eyed Ragetti spoke up.

"You didn't say it right."

He cringed as everyone on deck turned to stare at him. He had never really liked being the focus of anyone's attention, let alone everyone's attention. But for once in his life, he knew the answer to a big problem, and he couldn't just let a moment like that pass by.

"You…you've got to say it right," he stammered.

He had never thought that he, once a little street urchin of London, would know something that the rest of the crew didn't appear to know. They always seemed to know more than him about everything; tactics, treasure, women. That last was why he'd thought everyone would laugh at him. All of them, even Cotton and Pintel had more experience with women than he did. Oh, he knew that didn't necessarily mean that they loved all the women they had been with, but he'd assumed that they'd loved at least one. But here, it seemed, he'd been wrong. Because you didn't roar at someone you loved and Ragetti knew that.

He took a tentative step towards Calypso. If Barbossa couldn't do it right, maybe he could.

Calypso wasn't a bit like the girl he loved. He wasn't even sure you could call it love; when he'd told Pintel about it, he'd laughed and called it calf-love. Ragetti knew how he would talk to her though, so he closed his eyes and pictured the first time he'd seen her.

* * *

Ragetti was eleven years old again. He was sitting in a doorway at the mouth of an alley, across from a big church in London. This was before he'd lost his right eye to the tail of a whip on his first ship, a slaver. Here, he was all in one piece, albeit a very skinny, sickly piece. It was a Sunday in early autumn and it was the day that Ragetti met his love.

She had been in the church with the rest of her family. When the service was over, she'd come out after a portly, respectable-looking couple who must have been her parents and a boy in a new suit that was a little too big, her brother. Then out she came, practically shining in her white dress.

He'd never seen anything or anyone so beautiful. She was about his age and the first thing he noticed about her face was that it was clean. Sparkling clean, with rosy cheeks and a dimple. Ragetti rarely saw really clean people. Her hair was clean too, strawberry blonde and tied back with a white ribbon that matched her dress. It was a rather impractical dress, when one really thought about it. It picked up all the dirt and dust of the London street in its white ruffles, but Ragetti loved it anyway. She looked like an angel.

She looked even more like an angel when she suddenly met his eyes and smiled at him. He tried to smile back, but he was overwhelmed and always suspected afterwords that all he had done was close his gaping mouth.

She had frowned a little at this and he'd worried that he'd offended her somehow. He always seemed to be offending people just by existing. Guttersnipes like him were vermin, like rats and lice. But this little angel-girl wasn't offended.

Before any of her family realized what was happening, she had run across the street and was looking at him in a curious, concerned sort of way.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

It seemed like a silly question to Ragetti. Was anyone ever _not_ hungry? But then again, he'd heard that some rich people had whole rooms set aside for eating in. He gulped as he realized that the angel-girl must be one of those rich people.

Ragetti, never one for words, could only answer, "Yes."

The angel-girl frowned again. "It's Sunday," she said, "Don't you have a special supper on Sunday?"

Another silly question, but Ragetti wasn't about to say so. "No."

The girl pursed her lips and quickly put a gloved hand into a little bag Ragetti hadn't noticed. It was the same colour as her dress and her hair ribbon. She then pulled out a whole shilling and put it in Ragetti's stunned hand.

"There," said the angel-girl, seeming more and more angelic everytime she said something, "now you can have something nice to eat. Maybe you can buy a blanket too. It's getting cold out."

Then there was a plain little person, her nursemaid maybe, bustling up and scolding all the while, "Why Miss Diana, how naughty of you! Running away from your parents like that! And across the street too, you could have been struck down by a carriage! What were you thinking?"

All this time, she was fussing with the angel-girl's - _Diana's_ - dress and hair, but now she laid eyes on Ragetti, sitting in the doorway. "Oh, Miss Diana, get away from him! He probably has fleas! He's filthy, you'll get dirt all over your new dress." She didn't say one word to Ragetti himself, and he was rather glad because she seemed like a scary sort of person.

"Miss Carter, I didn't do anything wrong. The preacher said we ought to be kind to the poor, so that's what I'm doing." Diana seemed quite impatient with all the fuss.

"Kind to the poor!" the nursemaid cried, "You haven't give him money, have you?"

This was the point at which Diana became Ragetti's angel forever. She looked her nursemaid straight in the eye and said, "Don't be silly Miss Carter. Of course I haven't."

Ragetti knew it wasn't good to lie, but Diana had lied for him and it didn't look like Miss Carter believed her, so he stood up, like he had seen the actors in the square do and said to the nursemaid, "Please, mum, she was just telling me what good it'd do me immortal soul to go to church once in a while, like you done."

Miss Carter's expression was no longer an expression of disbelief, but Ragetti couldn't tell whether it was because she believed him or whether she was offended because a street boy had actually spoken to her.

Turning to Diana, he paused. He wanted to do something, to show her how thankful he was and how much he loved her, already. After a moment of thought, he drew himself up and did his best imitation of a courtly bow. "Thank you, miss, for everything." Again, he paused. There had to be something else to say. "Um…I'm Ragetti, at your service."

At this point he lost his nerve. He turned tail and ran down the alley, never pausing until he was several streets away.

He'd gone back to that church every Sunday he could manage for about a year. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her, and once or twice, she'd seen him and waved. She never got away from her nurse again, though.

* * *

Years had past and many things had changed for Ragetti. His uncle Pintel had appeared out of nowhere and helped him find a place as a cabin boy. That first voyage was the one where he'd lost his eye when the Bosun's mate had managed to get a hold of the whip while he was drunk. For days, while he lay in the sick-bay, delirious, he had dreamed of Diana. Pintel teased him about her, once he was better. "Young Mrs. Ragetti-to-be" he called her.

When Ragetti's ship was attacked by pirates on its way back to England from the West Indies, he and his uncle joined the pirate crew rather than let themselves be set adrift with the officers. Captain Sparrow, as he was then, had taken them on, and the second mate Barbossa had given Ragetti a wooden eye to use instead of an eye patch.

Every night on the pearl, Ragetti listened to the other sailors' tall tales and in every one, he pictured the heroine looking like Diana. His angel-girl had stayed with him forever, and he was sure he would always love her.

Now, standing on the deck of the Pearl, beside an ancient goddess in human form, Ragetti pushed Calypso's hair back from her ear and whispered haltingly, "Calypso? I release you from your human bonds."

* * *

**A/N **Hi everybody! Thanks for taking the time to read this! I just want to say that the actual proceedings of Calypso's release might not be, word-for-word, exactly what was in the movie; I haven't watched it in a while, but this fic has been buzzing around in my head since the first time I saw it. Thanks for reading!

**Update! **I've fixed a few spelling mistakes (Thanks Nytd!) and I've added a few details here and there. Nothing major, though. Also, I'm looking for a good beta reader; any suggestions?


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